Hope

I believe that there is always hope, not everything is ever lost, things could always be worse. However I admit that at times I have felt like they really couldn't, like there was no light shining, and there was no point for anything. I felt like hope was for the foolish, for people that wanted to live in a false reality. I understand why Loung would say that "[She] cannot allow [herself] the luxury of hope. To hope is to let pieces of [herself] die. To hope is to grieve his absence and acknowledge the emptiness in [her] soul without him" (108). I know that for her the hope that was lost was of her father coming back. Her truth was that he was gone. For good. Even if she had not said it out loud, or admitted it to herself, repeating it in her head to believe it, she felt it. And she couldn't deny what she felt. I know that what I felt when I felt that all hope was lost was very different than what she felt. We were put in different situations that ended up with those feelings, and even though I felt them I could never imagine being in her position, I could never imagine having to grow up in the situation she grew up in. I have family and friends that have grown up in difficult situations, I have heard their stories and how hard it has been for them, yet hers is simply horrific. I knew that things like this happened but reading about how someone suffered, and was affected personally, in their point of view makes the whole thing much more real. I am stunned that we do this to each other, that humanity can be so awful. Reading her story I think about one of my favorite songs, Dancing In Circles by Love & Theft. Part of the lyrics say "I don't understand why we do what we do to each other, according to his word we're all born sisters and brothers, but we lie and we steal, we fight and we kill even though we know the way…" Hurting each other is like a cycle that we can't break and that is exactly what the song says, but I still can't understand how people do this and are not affected, they simply don't care. How are they able to cause suffering, pain and death, and look the other way. Why don't they put themselves in the other person's shoes and think about how they would feel if it was being done to them.